The Google News Lab is a global team at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

whose mission is to "collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to help build the future of media". Launched in 2015, the team works with news organizations to help drive innovation, address industry challenges, and provide training and access to emerging technologies for reporting and storytelling. Some industry commentators have labelled it as an attempt to build goodwill among journalists, in contrast with rival tech giants such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

. The Google News Lab was added to Google News Initiative when it launched in 2018.

Impact

Combating misinformation

Google News Lab was a founding partner of the fact-checking coalition

First Draft In the context of written composition, "drafting" refers to any process of generating preliminary versions of a written work. Drafting happens at any stage of the writing process as writers generate trial versions of the text they're developing. ...

, which launched in 2015. In 2017, Google helped First Draft launch new collaborative reporting models to verify news stories during the UK, French and German elections. The News Lab also provides free training for journalists in how to "discover and debunk false news and misinformation," both in-person and on it
training website

Newsroom diversity

In 2017, the Google News Lab partnered with the

American Society of News Editors The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) was a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of ...

(ASNE) on its annual Newsroom Employment Diversity Survey. The survey showed how hundreds of newsrooms across the U.S. had changed since 2001. It also compared newsroom diversity counts to census data to show how newsrooms compare to their local area in terms of race and gender. The Google News Initiative Fellowship offers journalism and technology students from diverse backgrounds the opportunity to spend a summer working at organizations around the world.

Local news

The News Lab has trained more than 9,000 local reporters in the U.S. through a partnership with the

Society for Professional Journalists The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, lett ...

. Training programs for local newsrooms also exist in Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Criticism

Some industry commentators have labelled Google News Lab as an attempt to build goodwill among journalists, in contrast with rival tech giants such as

. The Google News Lab and Google's Digital News Initiative have been criticized as buy-offs of the newsrooms after its advertising

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

led to countless layoffs in newsrooms.

References

External links

* {{Google LLC News Lab American journalism organizations